The Princess in the Crystal Sarcophagus

By Charles Barnett

Egyptologists say that Sitamun, daughter of Amenhotep III, disappears from history after she is forced to marry her father. They have found her childhood furniture in the tomb of her grandparents, but no sign of the princess. In Barnetts third novel, we follow a team of scholars to the jungles of Guatemala and the mountains of Eastern Turkey in a quest for clues to the fate of the Egyptian princess.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491780862

Charles Barnett

Charles Barnett has travelled widely, preferring to visit the jungles and deserts of the so-called, Third World Countries. He prefers the hermit life, with one exception. For the past fourteen years he has lived with a seven pound, red poodle. Her recent departure, to live in Heaven, has left Charles with a gaping emptiness. He will never stop loving Gnuf-Gnuf, but she taught him that he can no longer bear to live alone. By the time you read this, hopefully he has found a tiny, red, girl poodle to share his hermit life as he takes the scholars of the Chalice Corporation to the Caribbean, and the mysterious pitch lakes and mud volcanoes of Trinidad, where a lanky, black man lives in the jungle and talks to the Mot-Mot birds.

Book preview

Chapter One

HAYYA ‘ALA KHAYR AL ‘AMAL

The Time for the Best of Deeds Has Come!

A bu Bakr, slim as wire, turban white, soul on fire, stands in door of crumbling cabin. Nostrils flare in desert air. Sliver of moon swims silent among coal dust clouds. It is time to kill.

Abu Bakr, leather skin, hollow eyes, hate within, steps from door on claw-thin feet to scratch a path into wind-smooth sand. It is time to kill,

Muscles tight in cool of night, tendons taut, as of metal wrought, press blue-black veins against drum-tight skin. It is time to kill.

Night is black, Bakr blacker still. Night birds open silent beaks to suck night past frozen tongues into gullets churning gravel, not food. No joy, no feast, no food, just gritty taste of dust and gusts of sand heavy wind.

It is time for innocence to die

Chapter Two

FATWAH

I t wasn’t just Born Agains who were whispering to one another in excited tones– some with a sense of outright joy. With wry expressions, even atheists were whispering to one another. Jews were excited, but had a different perspective on the matter. Muslims were angry and growing angrier as the whispering grew in intensity.

Credible or not, the thing being whispered in dark alleys, faculty lounges, and cocktail parties alike, was the same. The Biblical prophesy of a Second Coming was at hand. In faculty lounges they chuckled at the idea. In dark alleys, the homeless made the sign of the cross and prayed. Everywhere, behavior varied, but rumors persisted. Many claimed the Event had already taken place and would soon be revealed. Christ was alive, coming once more to bail out humanity. He was just waiting for the right moment to make a public appearance– another donkey-ride into Jerusalem? Not likely. Perhaps a spectacular appearance, like a Metropolitan Opera set, seated atop a cloud, surrounded by a Mormon Tabernacle choir of angels. Everyone agreed, it would happen soon, whether He came riding on a snow white cloud, or lounging in the back seat of a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. It didn’t matter.

Christians held their collective breath. Jews, unwilling to accept Christ the first time around, were ready this time. This might be the coming of the Mashiach, the highest of High Priests. Even Talmudic scholars had grown tired of the constant bickering among wise men in the Yeshivas. This coming of the Mashiach would be a relief. No one would deny that it might also create a world mood of charity and give the Jews relief from millennia of the anti-Semitism that was, once again, erupting with new vigor around the world. Whether Christian Messiah, Hebrew Mashiach, or just a convincing charlatan, maybe Jew-haters would back off for awhile if they felt a world growing unified against prejudice.

Everyone– or almost everyone– needed to rekindle the hope and change promised and denied so often of late. There were exceptions, of course. Academics scoffed at the whole business, but looked warily over their shoulders to be sure there were no Bible Thumpers who might be listening. Suddenly, they knew the taste of being the ones under scrutiny for their atheist inspired political correctness.

A great portion of the world paid no attention to the rumors at all– or anything else for that matter.

As the rumor grew more generally accepted, one huge group was not rejoicing – the faithful of Islam. The mullahs had long accepted Christ as a good man, perhaps a prophet, but no rival to Allah. They held to the idea of a Second Coming, but in the form of one of their own. The Ahmadi sect believed that the promised Mahdi and Messiah had already arrived in the person of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad during the Nineteenth Century. He turned out to be no great thing and was rejected by most Muslims who considered those who believed in Ahmad to be heretics and not true Muslims. Hadith, the collected sayings of Prophet Muhammad, did indicate that Jesus would return during the latter days. But Islamic doctrine proclaims that Jesus, upon his return, would be a Muslim, and a follower of Muhammad, come to reaffirm the truth of Islam.

The rumor afloat seemed to be of Christian origin, with no reference to Islam, so obviously false and dangerous. It needed to be stamped out, one way or another.

The rumors provided unsubstantiated references to a reborn Christian God, whether by First, Second, or Fifty-fifth Coming,. But the mullahs were faced with a problem. With a rising swell of Judaeo/Christian faithful, their own billion followers might find themselves swamped by sheer weight of numbers. The whole matter of rumors and rejoicing infidels must be stopped. The charlatan, and any theology surrounding him, could not be tolerated. The Supreme Leader called a meeting of the Council of Experts – all eighty-eight of them.

Behind closed doors, by a vote of forty to forty-eight, they concluded that the instigators of the heresy must be found and eliminated. The majority vote was convenient but really didn’t matter. The Supreme Leader would do what he thought best. He took note of the dissenters. He would deal with them later

The decision was made to issue a fatwah calling for the death of the infidel troublemaker. The heresy must be taken care of. But, how? There seemed to be too many in the rising tide of heretics to manage traditionally, like mass, public beheadings. Also, the mullahs were not sure they had the financial resources to carry out such a plan. It was also too complex. The United States had been producing its own oil for some time and the price of crude had dropped around the world. They decided on a more prudent approach. Cut off the single head of the snake– the imposter himself. The body of the snake thrashes about for a while but soon grows still. The Messiah, or whatever, must be found and eliminated. A pinpoint strike was called for.

A search was made among the ranks of the faithful for a proven assassin of great skill and dedication. It didn’t take long. One man was a legend among those who knew about such matters– Abu Muhammed Bakr, master meat chopper in Allah’s amply manned slaughterhouse staff of skilled killers and suicide assassins. He lived in an archaeologically unimportant ruin to the east of Fayoum in the western desert of Egypt. He was not Egyptian, but a transplant from Jordan, where his talents had not been looked on favorably.

The mullahs were in agreement. The pretender-child must be found and eliminated. The problem was that there was still too little information on which to act. They could not rely simply on whispers and uninformed rumors to guide them in a search for the imposter’s whereabouts.

It did not take long. The Vatican knew more than they were letting on. For good reason they had their own misgivings regarding the authenticity of the purported second messiah. The mullahs knew all about it. For a long time, they had been receiving intelligence reports from an Islamic mole, a 40778.png , strategically placed among the very house staff of Pope Benedict. His name was Mustafa. That’s all. Even the mullahs had no idea what his real, or full name was. To the Infidel Christians he was Mustafa bin Halim, but that was an assumed name, too, and one taken on very long ago when he left his family in Egypt.

For many years he was simply known as Mustafa. Under secret orders, had feigned conversion to Christianity, become a Benedictine monk, taking the Biblical name Ezekiel. He volunteered to perform menial tasks at the Benedictine Mother House in Subiaco, Italy. As in all human enterprises, one who volunteers for unpleasant tasks is always welcome.

Through a record of tasks thoroughly and cheerfully performed, Brother Ezekiel, became trusted with ever greater responsibilities. Occasionally, he would mention his interests in subjects more academic than mopping and toilet cleaning. Though he was never relieved of the ugly tasks, he was frequently given the opportunity to indulge his interests in more technical, ecumenical matters.

Little by little, Brother Ezekiel, became known as the go to person in matters related to pontifical protocol. When a low position became available in the Pope’s residence, the Benedictine Abbot President in Rome was delighted to suggest that he had, perhaps, the Pope’s perfect candidate in one of his staff at his Subiaco. Monastery, a lowly, but highly intelligent monk, named Ezekiel. The Abbot President was thanked profusely by the papal staff and told that his help would be remembered.

Uncomplaining, obsequious dedication to the most menial tasks, along with a great deal of bowing and scraping, finally paid off. Mustafa bin Halim, secret soldier of Islam, happily bid farewell to the toilet bowls of Subiaco and joined the staff of Pope Benedictine, the Sixteenth. There were toilet bowls in the papal palace, to be sure, but where are conversations less likely to be guarded than in the men’s room? Mustafa was learning a great deal, much of it of no interest to him, but little by little he overheard tidbits regarding the Child in a place called Abiquiu. He came to know all there was to know regarding the strange events surrounding the, officially still questionable, Second Coming of the Messiah.

It all went back to the peculiar activities of an Irish Jesuit, Rev. Ryan Quinn, S.J. who founded an ecclesiastical, research-for-profit organization called, Chalice Corporation. He and a team had gone to the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, into the catacombs beneath Khnum, Pharaoh Akhenaton’s City of the Dead. They had gone in search of the chalice used by Christ during the Last Supper. Though skeptical, Pope Benedict XVI had funded the expedition. Better to be on the inside of a fool’s errand than left on the outside if the expedition proved successful. As a precaution, he managed to have papal nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Gandolfo, accompany the expedition team.

Brother Ezekiel learned that the expedition had not only proved a success, but that the Chalice provided evidence in support of a matter of significance regarding Catholic dogma. More important, it provided intellectual proof of Christ’s divinity, and a clue to the means of bringing about the Second Coming through the application of 21st Century bioscience, impossible earlier.

The concept, tested by Father Quinn, produced a clone of Christ. The Child was being raised in a secret enclave in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Ezekiel found much of the information too weird and sensitive to transmit safely to Tehran.

After conveying the basics of what he learned, he worked carefully to secure a transfer for himself from the Vatican to New Mexico. As usual, with patience and low profile maneuvering, he got what he wanted. He told the Pontiff, whose ear he now had almost at will, that he wished to spend some time in seclusion in the desert in the traditional style of the early monks. He said he had found a Benedictine monastery in a secluded canyon in the New Mexico desert where they still practiced the Rule of Benedict with purity and zeal as in the early days. They devoted their time, in almost complete seclusion, to prayer, manual labor and Gregorian Chant.

He did not mention that he was also aware of a Muslim community within a few kilometers of the monastery, and that both were close to the enclave in which the new Christ Child was being raised.

The Pope knew of he enclave but had no reason to suspect Brother Ezekiel’s motives in seeking the transfer of his vows of residence to the New Mexico, Benedictine Abbey of Jesus in the Wilderness. He would miss Brother Ezekiel, but understood a monk’s desire to be away from the hubbub and politics of the Vatican. He felt the same but a pope has nowhere to run. Benedict was a scholar, not a showman like his predecessor, John Paul II. He just wished to write and pray, not make friends of the whole world. He envied Brother Ezekiel but released him from his assignment and gave him permission to join Jesus in the Wilderness Monastery if Ezekiel could secure permission of the monastery’s Abbot, That was not expected to be any problem –maybe some red tape from the Benedictine Abbot President, but when the Pope says please, even the devil jumps, snaps his tail, and salutes.

As usual, Ezekiel threw himself into his menial tasks at the New Mexico monastery and made every effort to grow invisible within the small monastic community. Everyone liked him, and particularly enjoyed the Middle Eastern cuisine he brought to their bland diet of fish sticks and mashed potatoes whenever it was his turn to serve as community cook.

Ezekiel had a big problem. Mustafa bin Halim was a Muslim, a dedicated man of Islam, but after so many years among the Roman Catholic clergy he had changed subtly. He had finally come to an intellectual point where he was unsure where his loyalties truly lay, both in a secular sense, and even regarding religious dogma. He had actually come to question a good deal of what he found in the Holy Qur’an. Despite the time consuming duties of his menial assignments, he was a scholar. He mulled over matters of theological intricacy in his head even as he mopped floors and swabbed toilet bowls. He often consulted a worn copy of the Hadith that he kept hidden among his personal belongings. In it, the record of Muhammed’s life and statements, he found some answers, but also more confusion. There were even contradictory versions of the Hadith, itself. Muslim sects were always at war, often to the death, over interpretations of the variations. It was a confusing world.

Regardless of his personal intellectual misgivings, Mustafa was a man of his word. He dutifully reported whatever he learned regarding the matter of the Second Coming. Fortunately, considering his state of mind, Jesus in the Wilderness was truly isolated. Although the enclave he was supposed to observe was only a few kilometers away, that was measured as the crow flies. In reality, lofty cliffs, deep valleys, arroyos, and rugged desert expanses lay between him and the enclave. There was nothing to see or hear first hand, and it seemed the monks of the monastery were virtually unaware of the nearby enclave or its importance. Perhaps the Abbot knew, but he never spoke of it.

There was one mysterious matter he had observed but had no way of knowing whether it was important or not. There had been a number of visits to Jesus in the Wilderness by a man in non-clerical garb. The young man suggested he might be considered an Oblate, a person attached to the Benedictine order because of their interest and ability to help the community, but without taking vows required of monks. This fellow would come and go, never staying for more than a day or two. He had a Croatian name, Cyril Knezevich. He claimed, if asked, that he was a papyrologist, an academic involved in the collection and decipherment of ancient documents, particularly those written on papyrus. He would meet with the Abbot in his private quarters. Ezekiel never saw any special briefcases or portfolios with him, and a surreptitious search of the monastery library didn’t reveal any ancient materials that might be considered of academic interest to a papyrologist. The man was a mystery, and remained so. Mustafa, (aka Ezekiel) never mentioned him to his Middle Eastern contacts.

Ezekiel was grateful for his isolation and consequent inability to serve as an effective spy against the nearby enclave. He had come to despise the role, and himself, for the part he was expected to play in what might be a wretched enterprise. What if the Second Coming were a reality and he, the secret Muslim, might be the one cast into outer darkness for his role in a plot against the wishes of the Almighty, Allah, God, or Whomever?

There was a satellite phone that permitted the monastery to communicate with the outside world. Ezekiel made use of it secretly in the middle of the night, pretending insomnia. His reports were short and always the same. I’ve heard nothing new. He simply affirmed the earlier information he had transmitted from Rome that the enclave existed on a finger mesa near a small Muslim community above the Chama River, in Abiquiu, New Mexico.

The mullahs became irritated, but had no idea what to do with Mustafa. He had provided them with enough so they could leave the rest to a trusted hunter-assassin. That man was Abu Muhammed Bakr. They would send him to Abiquiu, New Mexico. He would find the child, wherever he was, and decapitate the serpent. They issued a secret fatwah and summoned Bakr to speak with them in person. They found him repulsive. Everybody did –a wiry fanatic, perhaps an idiot savant, with the wits of a camel but a talent for inflicting pain and death– just the right man for the job.

Chapter Three

!

A bu Muhammed Bakr stands motionless in front of an adobe shack once used as a goat shed by a nearby Muslim community in. He is here to implement the fatwah placed on some child by the mullahs of Iran. Who is the child? He does not know. He does not care. He is a warrior in the army of Islam. Execution of he fatwah was entrusted to him. That is all he knows– all he needs to know. It is not his first assignment.

The nearby Muslim community is an insignificant outpost of Islam atop one of the barren mesas that descend like bony fingers from the Sangre de Christo Mountains, westward toward the Chama River. Founded by a Saudi prince, the community was left to fend for itself when the prince withdrew his support some years earlier. The large madressa, once ringing with the voices of children reciting passages from the Qur’an is now abandoned and crumbling. A small mosque survives to serve the community of those who found a way to survive on their own. The call to prayer is still sung five times a day across the mesas by the community muezzin. He has no minaret to raise him closer to heaven, but stands in front of the mosque, hands cupped around his mouth as he calls the faithful to prayer.

Straight and motionless in the dark, Bakr is a statue, barefoot and naked except for A white turban and loin cloth. Sharp pebbles beneath his feet are of no concern. Once, their sharp points might have caused him to shift his stance. Years of hardening had taught him to ignore physical discomfort. He is now a machine, able to focus only on the demands of Jihad. Like a piston engine, his mind pounds a single phrase over and over– Allāhu akbar, Allāhu akbar Allāhu akbar.

Bakr’s desert-tanned skin, stretched tight over bone and sinew is mahogany, his beard, ebony. Only his eyes betray the illusion he is a sculpture. Perhaps, even they might be carvings, but no. He blinks and glances to the east. He calculates the time remaining before sunrise and the onset of his mission. Allāhu akbar

For days, the killing machine, Abu Muhammed Bakr, has spent nights sleeping on the dirt floor of the adobe shack. The rest of the time he has spent further hardening his body, running up and down rubbly mesa slopes with only momentary pauses to sip water from a small goatskin. As during most of his life, training is everything. He never rests. A machine needs little more than an occasional bit of fuel. He eats and drinks small portions at regular intervals—just enough to survive. He is always ready to accept demands of Jihad whatever the difficulty, whatever the danger, including death. He needs nothing but mind, body, and will to serve the almighty. Allāhu akbar.

Bakr struggles up slopes, across mesas with sharp stones and cactus spines, down slopes, then back again, over and over– Allāhu akbar, Allāhu akbar, Allāhu akbar.

The shack where Bakr sleeps was provided without question by the faithful of the local Muslim community. They are Americans, but devout faithful of Islam. They know nothing of Bakr’s mission, nor from where he had appeared seemingly out of thin air. One evening he was simply there. It was not theirs to question, and he volunteered nothing. He asked for shelter. They provided it. It was written that they must. He did not have to remind them that hospitality is demanded by the Prophet, blessed be his name.

Bakr arrived with a small satchel, asked for shelter and nothing more. He said his satchel contained all the food and water he would need. They took him to an old goat shed and left him alone as he wished. He did not thank them,

The shack is a barely standing hovel comprised of crumbling adobe walls, a thatched roof full of open spaces, and a dirt floor. Though once shelter for a herd of goats, it had been abandoned so long it no longer even bore their aroma. For years it has been home only to scorpions, desert centipedes, and an occasional rattlesnake. Snakes never stay long for lack of water and anything on which to prey. The hard-shelled insects that remained do not approach the sinewy frame of Abu Muhammed Bakr as he sleeps. They sense a killing machine deadlier than they

It is almost time. Bakr stands in the dark, a three dimensional icon, carved by force of his own will, physical testimony to the magnificence of Allah. Soon this sinister machine will come to life as it springs to life in pursuit of Jihad. Bakr will perform flawlessly as he has before. He will die, if necessary, with the name of Allah on his lips.

Another glance at the horizon, the jagged silhouette of the Sangre de Christo Mountains still lost in the dark. Here and there, stars pierce the dark dome of night.

Holy warrior, dreadful killing machine, Abu Muhammed Bakr, turns and reenters the shack, He fishes for something in the satchel hung by the door. He withdraws, a stub of candle and a box of wooden matches.

Candlelight sends ghosts crawling across the uneven walls of mud and straw. He retrieves something else – a threadbare scrap of cloth. He lays it carefully on the floor, kneels on it, and touches his forehead to the ground.

His timing is perfect, as he knew it would be. Through the open doorway, comes the warning call of Adhan, first summons to prayer for the day.

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